Slide Launches New Animal-Raising Game SPP Ranch
Big Facebook application developers have been cranking up their launch cycles to try to come out with higher -quality games faster than their competitors, with some recent examples being CrowdStar’s Happy Pets and more recently Zynga’s PetVille. But, the most recent example we’ve seen is a new game from Slide, a spin-off title from SuperPoke Pets called SPP Ranch.
The SuperPoke Pets brand has been around for a year and a half, and this new title intends to capitalize on it by using the same pet characters and art.
Like another recent Slide title, Top Fish, the main mechanic is raising virtual creatures to earn points, allowing you then get more creatures, get objects to decorate with, etc. While in Top Fish you bought, fed and sold fish, in SPP Ranch you buy, feed (and water) and release painfully cute cartoony animals. This is more like the mechanic in farming games, and some aquarium games; the original SuperPoke Pets and other pets titles typically revolve around the long-term care 0f a specific pet.
In terms of the animal-raising genre, it is perhaps most similar to Beijing-based Rekoo‘s Animal Paradise. A big difference between the two is that Animal Paradise lets you steal animals from other users — a feature that’s popular in many social games that we’ve seen come out of China. Many players in the United States and many other parts of the world prefer to not have that competitive element, from what we’ve seen.
There are also some other interesting features in SPP Ranch. For example, animals regularly make a “mess” (defecate) in their pen, so you clean up the mess to earn points. This is similar to a common virtual aquarium feature: Your aquarium gets dirty over time, but you can earn points by cleaning it.
Like other big developers, Slide, with 25.7 million monthly active users, has the ability to cross-promote new games like SPP Ranch with its range of large, existing applications — although the app just launched today so we aren’t seeing major growth yet.
Really nice game that is. Cute indeed :)
great!
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WTF? Not Scamming millions from MySpace or HI5 users with this one yet Max?
It is going to be tough to compete with farmville. petville is adorable – the interaction with the pets and their friends is incredible. If you guys at slide/spp don’t pull it together, you are in a heep of trouble! I am a long time spp fan and pet owner but these other apps become more attractive everyday.
I’ve played both SPPRanch and FarmVille. I deleted SPPRanch in a couple of days as lame and am still playing FarmVille. SPPRanch would probably appeal to little kids, like 5-8 years old.
having been involved with superpoke pets and seen what slide considers constitutes customer service, I wouldn’t touch another of their products with a barge pole!!
they are an appalling company – ignoring real money issues of customers is just one small aspect.
the game has become steadily more difficult to play as they mess around with the program and our pleas to fix what is broken first before adding new things falls on totally deaf ears.
everything is the consumers fault – poor computer maintenance being a main one. Yet people who are computer experts and people with brand new computers have the self same problems.
big thumbs down for slide.
cum imi fac si eu ,,,,dar pana atunci incercati superpoke pets ala e mai mijto si e pe hi5 …
i like this game
several of us friends are so addicted into it
very cute and funny
esp the name , we cant guess what SPP means haha
we call this game SPP :p hahah fun fun fun
Can somebody please tell me how to get a new baby animal???
Don’t start playing this game now… they have CUT their staff for SPP ranch, and if you have ANY issues such as items you’ve PURCHASED disappearing from your ranch or inventory, or other technical issues, NO one is responding to HELP. I really liked this game, but sad that SLIDE doesn’t give a crap about people who invested in playing this game. They’ve abandoned the players… so remember, don’t pay for ANYTHING, and play at your own risk ;o(
I’m so sad because I played all the SPP games amd ranch was so damn cute, I played it almost since the very begining, and now, I’m watching it’s end.
How sad, Google is eating all this without caring about us, the true players.